This invention relates to snap fastening apparatus and more particularly to an automatic snap fastener attaching system particularly adapted to secure fasteners to a garment at predetermined intervals according to the size of the garment. The snap fastener has acheived wide spread use in the garment industry and in many applications has replaced the button and other conventional fastening devices due to the fact that the fastener is simply operated, easy to construct, and is reliable and rugged in use.
Hence, the snap fastener is employed in a great variety of garments and has acheived wide spread use. A particular type of garment upon which snap fasteners are employed is referred to as a youth garment. As is known, there are many manufacturers who design and manufacture clothing for youngsters from infancy to about twenty-four months of age or so. It is of course, understood that younsters in this range are subject to relatively rapid growth and hence, there is a substantial change in size between an infant and a youngster of two years or so.
Furthermore, most of the garments must contain provisions to permit access to the child's diapers and so on when the garment is being worn. As such, these garments which are sometimes referred to as creepers, sleepers and crawlers have a plurality of snap fastening devices on the inside periphery of the leg portion of the garment. This is to enable one to quickly open the garment for the purposes of changing or diapering the child during the course of the day. The emplacement of such fasteners during the manufacturing process is a relatively complicated and difficult job.
As is known, a typical fastener comprises two parts to enable closure of a garment. One part, which may be referred to as a female fastener section is emplaced near one edge of the garment and another part designated as a male fastener section would be emplaced on a corresponding edge of another part of the garment. When the female and male parts are coacting, the garment is secured or closed at that point.
Thus, in order to accomplish the emplacement of such fasteners, one has to properly align the female parts on one surface of a garment and the male parts on a corresponding other surface of the garment. These parts must be in relatively close alignment to assure that the garment closure presents a uniform and pleasing appearance when the male and female parts are thusly secured.
In order to accomplish this in regard to the above described youngster's clothing, the prior art employed a single operator who would operate two separate snap fastener attaching machines. The operator, based on skill, would then individually emplace both the male and the female fasteners on the garment at the proper locations based mainly upon her judgment as to spacing or based upon a preset marking which might be emplaced upon the garment at the proper locations prior to emplacement of the snap fasteners. This was a realtively time consuming and complicated technique which involved operator skills.
The problem is further complicated by the fact, as indicated above, that if the size of the garment changed as a function of the age of the child, then the spacing of the fasteners would have to change accordingly. Such size considerations and so on were implemented according to the ability and discretion of the operator and hence, it would not be uncommon to employ different operators to operate different machines according to the particular size of the garment being manufactured.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a relatively automatic snap fastener attachment system particularly adapted for emplacing fasteners on youngster type garments; which apparatus possesses a capability of automatic accommodation of size changes while further assuring that the garment, once positioned in the apparatus, will have emplaced thereon the requisite number of fasteners, each emplaced at the proper distance and separation strictly according to the size of the garment being manufactured.
Other objectives of the present invention will become clearer upon reading the specification wherein further details of the nature of this particular problem are more fully described.